1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer, and more particularly, to a computer capable of efficiently and noiselessly dissipating heat generated by heat-generating components installed in a case without using cooling fans.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, computers are comprised of a variety of functional parts. Representative examples of functional parts that may be installed in a computer case include a main board, a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics card, a sound card, a power supply, a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive, a compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM) drive, and a digital versatile disk-read only memory (DVD-ROM) drive. These internal parts installed in the computer case are connected to external peripheral devices, such as a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, an external memory device, and a printer.
Among such internal parts mounted in the computer case, the CPU, the power supply, and the graphics card are known as typical heat-generating components. When the temperature of a heat-generating component is elevated due to heat generated in the component, the performance of the internal parts is degraded and, in the worst case, the component may not function at all. As higher performing computer systems appear, the amount of heat generated by the heat-generating components increases, raising the need for better cooling. This is one of the critical issues that the computer industry is facing.
A general method of cooling heat-generating components installed in a computer case involves bringing heat absorbing heatsinks into contact with the heat-generating components and blowing cooling air over the heatsinks using cooling fans. Various research, for example, research regarding the types of materials and shapes of such a heatsink, has been conducted to efficiently absorb or dissipate heat generated by the heat-generating components.
In conventional computer cooling systems developed to date, commonly, each heat-generating component installed in a computer case is cooled by a cooling fan attached to the same, and the air that is heated in the computer case is outwardly discharged by another cooling fan attached to the body of the computer case. However, such conventional computer cooling systems have the following problems.
Since a number of cooling fans, which rotate at a high speed, are installed to cool the heat generating sources installed in the computer case, a large amount of noise is generated during the operation of the computer system. In fact, most of the noise generated by a computer system is mechanical noise caused by the cooling fans. Such noise generated by the cooling fans generally bothers computer users, particularly, sensitive users, and lowers working efficiency. Another problem is that external dust particles stick to the parts in the computer case, since a large volume of external air is circulated through the computer case by the cooling fans during the operation of the computer system. This problem becomes worst due to the electrostatic force generated by the internal parts and finally may lead to operational failure of the parts.
Another problem with the conventional computer cooling system lies in the inefficiency due to the active cooling of the heat-generating components within the computer case. The internal temperature of the computer system delimited by the computer case rises in a short time to be higher than the external temperature when the computer system is operated. Thus, the heat-generating components cannot be effectively cooled using the warm air in the computer case.